The invention relates to a mass compensator for an internal combustion piston engine with three cylinder banks offset relative to one another, each bank having four cylinders and one common crankshaft with four crank pins on which one piston-connecting rod unit of each cylinder bank acts.
Internal combustion piston engines of this design are known as W-type engines. The preferred cylinder angel is 60 degrees to one yields a spread of the outside cylinder banks of 120 degrees to one another. If an internal combustion engine of this type is to be installed in a motor vehicle, the installation spaces are very cramped and they must be taken into account in the engineering of the internal combustion engine, for example, also in mass compensation. Problems arise especially for balancing of mass forces and moments of the 2nd order if these forces and moments are to be balanced by compensating shafts driven in opposite directions with twice the engine rpm.